Forty Years of Goldwater-Nichols

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Goldwater Nichols was focused on the operational side of the military, the operational chain of command. The services were not joint, so we made the requirement for promotion to flag and general officer. You had to have joint credentials. We significantly strengthened the war fighting the combatant commanders. Senator Nunn and Senator Bill Cohen from Maine had an amendment to create the Special Operations Command. [00:00:29] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to the MWI podcast to you. With the generous support of the west point Class of 1974, I'm John Ambo, and 40 years ago this month, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Goldwater Nichols Act. The sweeping legislation, along with the Nun Cohen Amendment and Packard Commission reforms, quite literally changed the way the US Military operates top to bottom. The joint force today is defined by many features introduced in October 1986. But what did the legislators behind it actually seek to accomplish? How did Congress manage to enact a wide range of reforms that the Pentagon vehemently opposed? And in the four decades since, have the key features endured or eroded? To explore those questions and more, I am thrilled to be joined on this episode by Arnold Punaro, a Marine Corps officer who fought and was wounded in Vietnam. He would go on to serve as Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee while the work to bring Goldwater Nichols to fruition was taking place. He also continued his military service in the Marine Corps Reserve, commanding a division and retiring as a Major general. And he brings that unique perspective to the discussion you're about to hear. Before we get to it, as always, a couple quick notes. First, a very special thank you to the west point class of 1974 for their generous support to MWI. And second, what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and don't represent those of West Point, the Army, or any other agency of the U.S. government. All right, here's my conversation with Arnold Punaro. Major General Arnold Punaro, thank you for joining me on this episode of the MWI podcast. [00:02:10] Speaker A: Privilege to be with you and your listeners. [00:02:13] Speaker B: So it is October 2026. This month marks the 40th anniversary of the passage of the landmark Goldwater Nickels act passed in 1986. You wrote a report about it that was published this month that I. That I read. It's. It's fantastic. It's insightful. I really enjoyed it and was hoping you'd be able to find some time in what I'm sure is a very busy schedule to come on and talk about it. And the reason that I wanted you specifically to talk about it is not just because you authored this report, but you have A very unique perspective on it given your background. So I wonder if by way of sort of introduction to the listeners, if you can just sort of describe a little bit about your career. [00:02:55] Speaker A: Well, thank you for this opportunity to landmark legislation that totally reformed the operational chain of command of the military and many other aspects. I grew up in Macon, Georgia and I went off to college and I graduated in 68, 1968. That was the peak year for the draft. My father, who'd fought with Patton's army in World War II across France, said, Arnold, you don't want to get drafted because if you do, you'll go in the army, you'll go to Vietnam and war as hell, I can tell you that firsthand. So I volunteered for the United States Marine Corps and ended up as an infantry platoon commander in Vietnam faster than I ever would had had I've been drafted into the Army. I served as an infantry platoon commander on the interdicting the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the Quayson Mountains. You know, was a pretty intense year. I didn't last a year, but it was a pretty intense time to be in Vietnam. Unfortunately we had over 18,000 casualties that year at a five month period. I'd been in Vietnam five months before I was wounded in combat. I was the senior second lieutenant in my battalion and I ended up in the hospital in Yakushuka, Japan for many months. Finished my active duty tour in the Marine Corps, went back to graduate school at the University of Georgia and ended up going to work for Senator Sam Nunn who'd just been elected to the US Senate on an academic internship because my then wife to be was living in Washington and had a great job and I didn't have a job so I figured I could do that for 10 weeks and I ended up being there 24 years serving with Senator Nunn who ultimately became the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. I was the staff director of the committee for over 14 years at the time we passed a lot of this landmark legislation. And then when he decided not to run again to do other things, I went into the business world. So that's generally who I am. I'm very fortunate to have a wonderful lovely wife who also has roots in my hometown of Macon, Georgia. Her dad and mom were in the Navy in World War II. Four kids and 12 grandkids and all of them are University of Georgia Bulldog fans. Even though we weren't able to beat the Auburn Tigers last week, I wasn't [00:05:07] Speaker B: going to bring up the results of last weekend. I introduce you as Major General Arno Punaro, because I understand you stayed in the Reserve component of the Marine Corps throughout the. [00:05:17] Speaker A: I did, and I'm so glad you reminded me of that. I'm certainly proud to be a Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine. So I did my four years of active duty like I was supposed to, and I never had planned to make a career in the Marine Corps. I'm working for Senator Sam Nunn and the Chief of Staff of the army at the time Creighton Abrams came to visit Senator Nunn. He was chairman of the Manpower and Personnel Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And Senator Nunn invited me to be in the meeting. I was the only one on his staff at the time that had a combat record. And General Abrams asked to meet with me out in the hall after the meeting. And he said, you know, Arnold, did you stay in the Reserves? I said, well, no, I didn't stay in the Reserves because I've really not heard good things about the Reserves. And so I really didn't want to serve in that kind of an outfit. He says, arnold, I'm telling you right now because of our lessons in Vietnam, we will never go to a war in the future without calling up the Guard and Reserve. The Guard and Reserve is going to be extremely important. You really ought to seriously think about staying in the Reserves. Based on Creighton Abens advice to me. I joined the Marine Corps Reserve. I was a captain at that point and ended up having a great career in the Marine Corps Reserve, making it all the way to general officer and commanding the 4th Marine Division for three years, directing the Marine Corps Reserve in the big reserve call up after 9 11. And I tell John Abrams, rest in peace and Abe Abrams. I bumped into them in the Pentagon off and on many times over the years. And I've told them what I owe their dad for the advice that he gave me. And sure enough, if you go. And of course I was in the Senate for Desert Shield Desert Storm after got mobilized as a reservist for Desert Shield. The country did not get behind that act, that war, until the Guard and Reserve were called up. So Creighton Abrams was very prophetic. And this was like in the early 1970s when he said that. So I've been blessed to be a grunt like many in the army have been over the years in the United States Marine Corps thanks to an army general. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Well, given that background, given the fact that you did ascend to the rank of two star general, you commanded a Marine Corps division and also served as the Staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee at this sort of really, really instrumental time. You have a unique perspective on this legislation from the policy making side, but also the sort of operational impact side of it. I wonder, you know, because we're going to have in amongst our listeners, we're going to have some people who are very, very well versed on the ins and outs of Goldwater Nichols. And on the other end of the spectrum, we're going to have people who have heard of it but have, you know, at best, fuzzy details. I want this discussion to be meaningful and engaging for anybody who's listening to it to. So to sort of set a baseline level of understanding. Can you. Can you sort of describe the Defense Department before Goldwater Nichols and what some of the issues that you saw, you know, in the seat that you sat in, you almost. [00:08:15] Speaker A: That's a really excellent. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. Such a terrific starting point. You really need to go back to World War II. Many people probably don't remember in World War II we had a War Department, which was the army and the Army Air Corps. There was no Air Force and the Department of the Navy, which was the Navy and the Marine Corps. And they were two absolutely separate cabinet level departments. And of course we had, you know, the chiefs of those services back in those days. And. But they weren't unified and they weren't really called the Joint Chiefs. They. You had Roosevelt as the President, the initial president for most of the war, who had a very strong Navy background, and he really basically put a lot of emphasis on the Navy in World War II, to the point that General George Marshall, of course one of the finest military leaders we've ever had, actually one of the finest civilian leaders we've ever had. One time joked about to Roosevelt, you know, could you give the Army a little something here? You know, we can help you in this war. Of course, obviously they did at the end of World War II, of course, Truman was president and they decided that we needed to unify the military and unify the Department of Defense. So the War Department and the Navy Department, by the way, the Navy Department was not in favor of this. Just like the Navy Department was the most fierce opponents to the Goldwater Nichols reforms in, you know, back in 1986. So the war Department, the Navy Department were unified into the Department of Defense, which it is still called today in Title 10, although in the current version of the National Defense Authorization act, because of the recommendation of the current Secretary of Defense and calls himself the Secretary of War. They include A provision to change Title 10 from Department of Defense, Department of War. By the way, as I mentioned, in World War II, it had been the Department of War through most of our country's history. And in fact. And they created the Air Force, the Army Air Corps, which basically was the army during World War II. And both the European and Pacific Theater was created as the Department of the Air Force. So you had the Department of Defense, you had the army, you had the Navy, you had the Marine Corps, and you had the Air Force, the Forest Services, then. However, even when Eisenhower got to be president in 1956, when they tried to do a lot of unification and try to get all the stovepipes knocked down and get people to work together, train together, purchase things together, that didn't work, and so come up to, you know, the Korean War, the Vietnam War. We still did not have a really unified Department of Defense. You had a number of failures. I would argue that Vietnam War was a failure. We didn't win that war. There's a lot of a great Army. Colonel Summers, you know, wrote a great dissertation on this and talked about why we, you know, we didn't win. The lack, the poor strategy and things like that. You had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the largest loss of life for Marines since the Iwo Jima battle. And there were eight layers of command between the commander on the ground for the Marine Corps and General Bernie Rogers, who was the U.S. european and SAC, your commander. Eight layers. So there were so many things that. That we found out in that era that was just not working. Well. Even General Vesey is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Grenada was successful, but there were a lot of problems, a lot of communication problems, a lot of stovepipe problems. So, you know, the committee started looking at this when General Davy Jones was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I mean, I'm sorry, was Chief of staff the Air Force and then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he started talking about the need for major reform. It was not well taken at the time. He was ostracized for his comments. We come into the 1980s. The committee started looking at this. You had Ike Skelton and Bill Nichols and Bill Dickinson on the House Armed Services Committee that began looking at this. You had John Tower, Scoop Jackson. Then you had John Tower, Sam Nunn. Then you had Barry Goldwater, Sam Nunn. The committee really did a major review and investigation for up to four years. We produced a massive staff study of all the problems and recommendations on what ought to be changed. And so that was the background for the legislation in both the House and the Senate that became known as Goldwater Nichols. And so that was really the history. I mean, even though we did have a few successes, we had a lot of failures. And the reason was we really never ever unified the military. We didn't have the purchasing way. They were all buying their own things. We didn't have the capabilities we need. They couldn't, they didn't train together, didn't work together. By the way, if you look at, at when Jimmy Carter the desert one thing situation that was commanded by Major General Jim Vaught, who was commanding general of then the 24th Mech Division at Fort Stewart. We know him well because it was in Georgia. But they didn't train together, they didn't have the proper equipment that they needed. They, there was a flaw, you know, chain of command. So all these things basically gave the Congress the impetus basically to start reforming the Pentagon. And I will say again, over the strenuous objection of all the military leadership and all the civilian leadership at the time in the Pentagon. [00:13:33] Speaker B: And what was the approach to overcoming some of that objection? I mean, was there an effort on the Capitol Hill side to, you know, bring the uniform military leaders onside and get them involved in the reform, or was this a case of, hey, our job is oversight. It's clear that there's a problem and we're going to solve it whether or not you object. [00:13:53] Speaker A: Under The Constitution, Article 1, Congress basically provides all the funding for the Department of Defense. It also says you will raise armies, maintain navies, and provide the rules and governance thereof. The committees tried to work with the Pentagon without question. We always like to work with the Pentagon. We like their input, we like their views. But they were so opposed to this that it was determined that that was just in the too hard box. I know. I remember meetings when Senator Nunn and Barry Goldwater would go to the Pentagon in the tank and we'd be personally assaulted by four star members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff calling their patriotism into correct. You're talking about two of the most conservative supporters of the Department of Defense through their entire time in the Senate, Barry Goldwater, a World War II vet. And yet it was very personal. So we basically figured out that we weren't going to get very far working with the current leadership of the Pentagon. I will tell you though, there was some closet supporters of what we wanted to do, including Admiral Crow, who had been the commander of the U.S. pacific Command and became the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs under the reforms. Colin Powell was very supportive behind the scenes. Shy Meyer was very supportive behind the scenes. But the current sitting chiefs and the current Weinberger, the civilian leaders, particularly the Navy and the Marine Corps. Admiral Jim Watkins was Chief of Naval Operations. General PX Kelly, Commandant of the Marine Corps, intensely opposed, both in private and in public, and did everything they could to derail the legislation. It didn't work because you had probably two of the most respected members of the United States Senate when it came to military manners, Barry Goldwater, Sam Nunn, and in lockstep, working on a bipartisan basis. And the Pentagon was not able to, you know, overturn, you know, what the Congress was going to do. And to his great credit, Ronald Reagan signed it into law even though his own Pentagon had opposed it. And one of the reasons is we had two people working on the National Security Council. One was Mike Donnelly. Mike would go on to be the Secretary of the Air Force in a subsequent Republican administration. Bud McFarlane was a national Security Advisor. He'd worked on the Retired Marine. He'd worked on the committee with me. He and I did the major investigation of Desert One. And he knew there were some real problems. So to Reagan's great credit, the legislation passed 96 to 0 in the Senate. Kind of hard not to sign something like that legislation. [00:16:22] Speaker B: So Goldwater Nichols was one pillar alongside Nun Cohen and the Packard reforms as well. Is it best to sort of conceptualize the three of them together as all oriented toward what's the overarching objective? Was it sort of reforming the department organizationally and enhancing jointness and the ability to operate jointly? How would you describe the sort of overarching objective? [00:16:45] Speaker A: I think you captured the spirit, intent and letter of the legislation. So Goldwater Nichols was focused on the operational side of the military, the operational chain of command, the need to strengthen civilian control of the military, which is critically important, no matter who the Secretary of Defense or Secretary of War is. If you read title 10, it says in there, and I take great pride in this because I helped do the drafting. Everything in the department is subject to the authority, direction and control of the Secretary of Defense. If you go to the Department of the Navy, it says, everything in the Department of the Navy is subject to. To the authority, direction and control of the Secretary of the Navy. A civilian and the Secretary of the Navy is subject to the authority, direction and control of the Secretary of Defense. You had a recent situation in this administration when the Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, was not basically able to get along with Some of the directions of the Secretary of Defense and whether he was right or wrong about his position. Title 10 is very clear about who makes the final decisions of civilians in the Department of Defense. So we also felt like there needed to be. Everything would be operating jointly. The services were not joint. So we made the requirement for promotion to flag and general officer. You had to have joint credentials. We talked about, you know, the characteristics you need to be a service chief. And of course, the Senate Armed Services Committee has jurisdiction over the confirmation of the service chiefs. We looked at basically, again, crystallizing that chain of command. At the same time, we were looking at the special operations capability which had become so important. But again, they were disjointed in the Pentagon. They didn't have the funding they need. They didn't have the support they needed. So Senator Nunn and Senator Bill Cohen from Maine had an amendment to basically create the Special Operations Command and create civilian oversight in the Assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations and low intensity conflict. And that had a lot of support in both the Senate and House Armed Services Committee. It did not have support in the building. I think history will prove that was a wise move on the part of the Senate and the House to create that Special Operations command. And I think there are lessons to be learned there for the new autonomous command that they're looking to create in the Department of Defense. And then, because Ronald Reagan, thanks again to National Security Council, was worried about the fact that even though we had the largest budgets in peacetime, in the Reagan buildup, we weren't getting the bang for the buck we should for the dollars we were spending. You had these horror stories about, you know, $300 hammers and expensive toilet seats. But I mean, basically the Pentagon acquisition process, which is requirements and acquisition, was broken. And so you basically, that year in 86, you fundamentally fixed the operational chain of command. You created the special operations capability that's proven itself in history time and time again since then. And you had the Packard Commission reforms which tried to streamline the acquisition, get rid of the gold plated requirements. I would say on Packard, you know, over time, that bureaucracy got very bloated, very layered, very heavy and many layers. And what you're seeing now, the Pentagon, in some of the direction from the Secretary of War, and also the legislation in the last year's National Defense Authorization act, the SPEED act and, and the Forge act, are trying to go back to the fundamentals of Packard, because we've had 40 years of bureaucracy and bureaucratic processes since Packard. So a lot of what's happening right now is going back to some of the fundamentals in 86. So those so strengthening civilian control, creating the joint capability that we see in action today in all of our activities, having the special operations capability and giving them their own ability to purchase the kind of weapons they need because they don't need aircraft carriers and they don't need expensive multi road fighters. And to basically streamline the setting of requirements, I've said facetiously over the years, the iron majors and the services they gold plate the requirements if the army could get away with it, they want a nuclear powered tank that could fly itself to the battlefield, not technologically possible, cost prohibitive. And so they're streamlining all that, getting back to basics. So 86 was just one of the most fundamental changes in our Pentagon since the end of World War II. [00:21:19] Speaker B: You mentioned the eventually unanimous passage with zero votes against passage of the legislation. This was a years long process. As you described it though when you first started, did it feel like it was going to be inevitable? This is necessary and we've got the, you know, the influence with, with the key senators involved on board. This is going to happen. Or you know, did you have doubts about whether or not you were able to get across the finish line? [00:21:44] Speaker A: Oh no, we didn't listen when we started we didn't have the votes. I mean the bottom line in the legislative process, the bottom line in the Senate. And you know, I tell this to people all the time in the class I teach, taught at Georgetown, in the graduate school for 10 years now teaching, you know, at the University of Georgia. You know, I tell my students, you know, in the legislative process you either have the votes or you don't. When we started we did not have the votes because of the opposition of the Pentagon, the particular opposition of the Navy and the Marine Corps. So we had to figure out a legislative strategy. One of the things we figured out in the legislative strategy is, you know, we had learned over the years how the Pentagon overreacts to anything they don't like. So we decided as part of our legislative strategy to try to bring people around and to try to basically get some support from the Pentagon in the recommendations that we made in the staff report and in the draft legislation. We put in some provisions that we had never had any intention of passing, such as the total disestablishment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And of course true to form, they just went totally berserk over that. We had a couple of other ringers in there that we had no Intention of doing so. As the legislative process moved forward, we basically made these major concessions, wink, wink. We decided we're not going to do away with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We're not going to pass some of this, you know, to basically. And so the building, some of the people in the building. Oh, yeah, we won, we won, we won. And of course, we kept our eye on what exactly we really wanted to do, which was to crystallize the chain of command, civilian control, enhance the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where you no longer had to get the lowest common denominator, what I call the tyranny of consensus, and you strengthen the war fighting commands. That was the third thing that we did. I should have mentioned earlier, we significantly strengthened the war fighting the combatant commanders in the field. And we said in Title 10, the Service Secretaries, the civilian service secretaries will organize, train, equip, supply their services in support of the requirements of the war fighting combatant commanders, not the iron majors that work in the Department of Defense. And so that was, you know, we were able to pass that legislation. We had a lot of amendments in the markup. We accepted the ones that we thought were positive from the opposition. We defeated the ones that, you know, we didn't think were positive. We only won the vote to create a vice chairman. We felt like it was important to have a vice chairman that was really focused on the requirements and technical side of the joint capability. We only won that by one vote. Strom Thurmond was the key vote in favor. And he, he, he voted in favor of it on the day of because he got a call from Army General Schein Meyer, the retired chief of staff of the army, saying he thought it was a good idea. And Thurmond, he voted for the vice chairman and it passed. And so we had the vice chairman and the enhanced chairman in the Senate version. Ike Skelton was the leader in terms of drafting up the joint requirements for promotion to flag and general officer. That was in the House bill. So we accepted a lot of their provisions on the joint requirements. And they accepted, you know, our chairman and vice chairman. And that's how the legislation ultimately, you know, passed both bodies. Conference report and Reagan signed into law October 1, 1986. [00:25:07] Speaker B: Anybody who has served in the military, you know, recently or since Goldwater Nichols really has been in and around it understands, you know, the cocoms are the centers of gravity. Right? It's the way we think about what we do as a joint force. I presumably one of the criticisms or concerns about this legislation early on. And we've even seen some criticisms more recently that say that it, that, that it went too far, that it would weaken the services. Was that ever something that you were concerned about as you sort of shifted this center of gravity to the operational war fighting commands in the. [00:25:41] Speaker A: We looked at that, but like, like In World War II, the services were all power, the all powerful. The military departments were all powerful, in fact, too powerful. Yes, we, we looked at that, but we felt like what we did was really getting them back to the original intent of the reforms. At the end of World War II when we created the Department of Defense, we made. I mean, the service secretaries under Title 10 are actually more powerful under Goldwater Nichols than they were before Goldwater Nichols. Because there was really. The military felt like they were running the military departments and not the civilian service secretaries. That's why we put in there. By the way, if you go look at Title 10, the service chief only does what, what the service secretary says they can do. They don't have any independent, really authorities under Title 10. Now they do serve in another hat as a member of the Joint Chiefs. But under Title 10, everything in the Department of the Navy is subject to the authority, direction and control of the Secretary of the Navy. That's why you want civilians in these jobs. That's why right now, for example, the President has nominated Hong Kong to be Secretary of the Navy. He's going to require a waiver because he hasn't been retired from active duty for over seven years. And we've stressed both for Secretary of Defense. I personally was not in favor of granting the waiver for Secretary for Jim Mattis or Lord Austin, two of the finest military generals we've ever had. But George Marshall, when Truman asked him to serve as Secretary of Defense, he said he'd do it for a year. But he said, really, Mr. President, it's the wrong thing to do. Retired military should not be the civilian control of the Department of Defense. So George Marshall, and don't ever do it again. We did again for Jim Mattis and Lord Austin. We shouldn't have, in my judgment. And that's why we basically want to be in control of the military departments. And the same title 10 language is in the Department of the Air Force and in the Department of the Army. [00:27:36] Speaker B: I was just having a discussion with some Marine field grade officers who are the driving forces behind an organization called the Connecting File. One of the things we talked about was that jointness is just a feature of what we do across the board. When you were Thinking about this, you know, the jointness requirements for selection for general or flag officer that, that this legislation implemented, were you thinking this is an important step just so that we select the right general and flag officers, or this is, you know, a step toward creating a culture of jointness that is harder to measure but is a thing that we're going to require going forward. [00:28:16] Speaker A: We wanted both. Look, the Marines are a small service. We've always been joint because we have to be joint because we're too small to operate independently. I mean, we can do a few things independently, but the Marine Corps always is operating as part of the joint force. So I grew up in joint and knew we had to be joint, but we also knew that you had to change the culture, which is the hardest thing to do in any organization. And that's why. And of course we want the best. The best. And we want to have a merit based promotion system. But you do have to fulfill your joint duty requirements. I think probably the initial joint duty requirements, particularly the ones that came in the House bill, may have been a little too stringent, but the fact that we needed to fundamentally change the system and change the culture, we went ahead and put those in. We modified them a little over the years. And, you know, we've looked at the Goldwater Nickels off and on. John McCain, who I got very close to over the years because he had started in Navy Senate liaison as a captain. When he got out as a pow, he was the Senate liaison officer. By the way, his Marine counterpart at the time was a Marine named Jim Jones, who became Commandant SACUR and National Security Advisor. So in the Navy Marine Corps. So when he was chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he of course ran for Congress and he ran for the Senate. When Barry Goldwater retired, he actually came on our committee. The first year I was staff director and Senator Nunn was the chairman. He and John Glenn, chair and ranking member of the personnel subcommittee for eight years. They were a terrific team. Think about the two people you had being in charge of jointness and being in charge of the military. Two incredible combat veterans, John Glenn and John McCain. Those are the kind of people that served on the Armed Services Committee. And of course, we had John Warner, World War II, Navy career Marine, many others. So we looked at this and in 2017 made some adjustments. One of the things that we had done is typically the senior military have four year tours. The Chiefs of service, the Joint Chiefs, four years we'd made it in the chairman and the Vice chairman. We initially set it to two year Tours because we felt like a president ought to have the ability to pick who they want as chairman. And it's so hard. We used to think it was so hard to fire chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And so we made it two two year tours over the years. As we looked at that, I felt, and I really talked to Senator Nunn and Senator Warner who were both out of the Senate at the time. When John McCain asked me for input on this, I felt like because of the two year tour where they had to be reconfirmed at the second, the second two years, they were looking over their shoulder a little too much. So I recommended we go back to four years for both, which the law now does. So we did that. So we were very mindful of this. But the fundamental change was to the culture. Everybody learned that basically if you wanted to be promoted to the highest ranks in our military and be leaders both in war fighting and, and in peacetime, you basically had to have your joint duty credentials. And that got people, the Joint Staff really got to the point where they were. I said the Joint Staff can outpoint paper the office of Secretary of Defense, particularly the poly shop, they can do 10 point papers, you know, really good ones by the time OSD shows up to work at 7:30am so the joint Staff has become extremely powerful. Some people would argue maybe a little too powerful. But if you get the right balance with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense, then you [00:31:42] Speaker B: don't have that issue you mentioned. Grenada is sort of the final test of the kind of pre Goldwater Nichols military where sure we succeeded operationally, but there were a lot of problems that maybe that, that success papered over a little bit after the implementation of the legislation. We had Panama and then we had Desert Storm. Did you or did you know, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, did they look at those cases as tests of whether or not this, this act effectively modified the way that we operate? [00:32:13] Speaker A: We did. And Senator Nunn and I had an inherent advantage because for Panama, Max Thurman, four star, was the Southern Command commander headquartered down in Panama. We'd actually met Max as a two star when he was head of the army budget. And you know, I hate to be. I did, I think I put this in my first book. Jimmy Carter was president and he was not putting defense budgets up that Senator Nunn felt like were appropriate for the time we needed more increases. And he was, he was pinging on President Carter, you know, over the time to basically increase the defense budget. Harold Brown was The Secretary of Defense and Senator Nunn basically with a group of other bipartisan group of senators said, we're not going to consider the strategic arm limitation talks, SALT one, SALT two, if we don't get a big increase in the defense budget. So Jimmy Carter called Senator Nunn on a Friday afternoon and said, can you come down Monday morning and brief me and the National Security Council? Harold Brown will be there on your case for why we didn't increase the budget. So none grabs a hold of me. I'm working then, you know, directly for him. And he says, arnold, we got to brief the President, you know, Monday morning. We got to throw something together. And I'm thinking to myself, holy smokes, because Harold Brown's going to be there. Russ Murray, who was the head of PA Programs, Analysis and Evaluation, you know, was going to be there. So I knew we were going to get flashback. So what did I do? And of course, you know, at the time, we never could admit this. I called Max Thurman up as a two star and said, hey, we're going to brief Carter. I got to have your help. You got to get the other services. You can't tell anybody. I need some really hard hitting charts and graphs on why we need the budget increase. I know how to make the argument, but I need you to get all the bad news stories. You know, he did that. God bless Max. He got everybody. We had these dynamite charts. We get down there and we make the pitch. You know, I got to brief some of them. Jeff Record, who worked with us at the time, got Senator Nunn did some of the briefing. Carter looks at Harold Brown and says, harold, is Sam correct? And Harold Brown says, yes, Mr. President, he is correct. Carter ended up increasing the defense budget, but Russ Murray grabs me outside the national security and said, where did you get all that information? That's privilege. And I said, friends of conventional forces. So I never admitted. Never. So. So we got to know Max. So Nunn and Warner flew down to Panama when it was still ongoing to get briefed by General Thurmond. Wayne Downing flew down with us. We've gotten to know Wayne really well as a colonel, by the way. I met Carl Steiner, who ended up being SOCOM commander's lieutenant colonel at Fort Benning in the 1970s. So we built those relationships with the Special Ops people. So when we wrote the legislation, we had a lot of good input from the field, as we said. I always felt like we wanted to make sure we, we had input from experts. But we got to know Max. Max says, look, Goldwater Nichols has made a big difference, you know, for this. Schwarzkopf, of course, had been. After Jim Vaught had been the commander of the 24th Mech, and, you know, we got to know him pretty well. Dick Cheney called Senator Nunn and said, sam, would you and John Warner and Ted Stevens and Danny in Norway like to go over and get a very highly classified briefing on Schwarzkopf's war plan? Obviously they said, absolutely, yes. So Dick Cheney, to his great credit, so. So Schwarzkopf is with Gus Gano, who was logistics, you know, briefed us, you know, highly classified on. On the whole war plan. And he said at the time, and we had him testify in public after the war, he basically said, Goldwater Nichols, you know, made a difference, you know, was a huge difference in terms of the success of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. So we felt like, you know, we've done the right thing also, because Senator Nunn felt like it would take many years for this to take hold. We required every senior civilian nominee and every senior military nominee that had to get confirmed by the United States Senate. They had to answer four or five questions about Goldwater Nichols before they ever got confirmed. And, you know, we. We said, do you support it? Do you see any changes? Do you recommend any changes? We gave people an option to saith them in that. In that whole period. And by the way, John Warner, Carl levin and John McCain also asked those questions. Even after Senator Nunn left in 97, they still did it. So it basically got inculcated in. In the thinking process of the most senior people they knew. If they came in and said, well, we don't like Goldwater Nichols, of course, we never would have confirmed them. They. They knew that. But on the other hand, you know, I would. We would meet with every single civilian, every senior, senior miller and informal setting. We'd ask them directly or anything you think needs to be changed. The one thing that came up often on over the years was, is the joint stuff a little too restrictive? That was the main thing. And we made some adjustments there. [00:37:04] Speaker B: You know, about the same time that passed between the Post World War II reforms and Goldwater Nichols has now passed. Since Goldwater Nichols, the legislation was passed in 1986. So I think it's an opportune time to. To, you know, take a look at how effective are these reforms that maybe initially were immensely effective. Are they still sort of fit for purpose in a very different global operational environment, on a very different strategic landscape? You included in this. In this paper that you wrote sort of a Scorecard of a number of those things. What do you think amongst the many things that this legislation did, I guess what continues to serve its purpose best and what maybe needs some, some changes now after another 40 years have passed? [00:37:51] Speaker A: I would say civilian control of the military remains paramount and that is working well. I think the enhanced role of the Chairman as a senior military advisor to the Secretary of War, to the National Security Council, to the President is in place and working well. I think the basic requirement for people to be joint, to be able to be promoted to flag and general officer, you know, is still working well. I would say there are a number of things we felt over the years. The joint requirements process got incredibly bloated and bureaucratic and was not working hardly at all. And so that needed to be changed. And you know, the Secretary of War has got changes there, the Congress has got some changes coming there. We also gave the chair, by the way, I think the emphasis on the war fighting commanders as the focus of main effort, as the center of gravity is still there. I do think they don't have as much influence on the setting of requirements as they should. I think that needs to be fixed up and tightened up a bit. I would say the Chairman had the opportunity to submit an alternative budget even though they had a very large JH staff which looked at this, I don't think they ever really did anything fundamental in that area, just kind of in the too hard box. So I think any legislation, I think the Special operations legislation has worked exceedingly well, particularly the fact that SOCOM has their own acquisition authority. Hondo Gertz was down there for a long time, has told me personally how important it was for them to be able to buy stuff that the major acquisition systems never would have bought for the special operators. Packard of course, got incredibly bloated over the years. The layers, the bureaucracy, 187,000 people in the acquisition workforce, 35,000 contracting officials. Hugely bloated Defense Contract Audit Administration. Hugely bloated Defense Contract Management Agency. I think the thing that's out of control in the Department of Defense today is Defense wide spending. Defense wide spending, if you all allocate it correctly, it is over 30% of the entire budget. And you know, it's as large as the budgets of the military departments. And a lot of it are these monster defense agencies like DLA, Defense Commissary Agency that loses close to $2 billion a year on sales of over 5 billion. So there is a lot of need for reform in what I call the overhead elements or the management Part of the Department of Defense. We fix the operational side of the department. I think that's working well. The management chain of command needs significant reforms and long overdue. And again, I'm not talking about, you know, things defense wide like golden dome, missile defense, those are really important. I'm talking about these just massive bureaucratic organizations. And again, the reason that they're looking at reforms on acquisition is because the Packard stuff got bloated over the years. Again, you just can't have a streamlined process when you have that many layers of bureaucracy and that many people in the decision chain. Bill Perry, you know, legendary defense director, Defense Research and Engineering, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Defense, one of the finest, you know, minds we've ever had in the department, told me once, Arnold, bad processes beat good people every day. The people that go to work in the Pentagon, the military, the Guard, the Reserve, the defense civilians, the defense contractors, they show up every day in the world's largest, most complex organization trying to do the very best job they can for the war fighter and the American people and the American taxpayers. I never criticize people that show up. It's the processes that kill them. These good people cannot overcome these bad processes. When I did the defense reform chair, the Defense Reform Task Force for Secretary Bill Cohen in 97 because he wanted to see Arnold, how can we make this place more efficient, more effective? We found 31 layers between the joint action officer and the Secretary of Defense's office. We found that the DLA did more business with the Department of Defense than the government's largest defense contractor at the time. And yet it's not run like a business. It's a logistics business. I've argued over the years they've done it with the Defense Foreign military sales organization. They ought to put civilians that have expertise at Walmart and Costco at places and, and have the military three star be the deputy, you know, not the head head person. Nobody's ever been willing to do that. But that's where the bloat is today. It's on the management side. And even though, you know, we're talking about these direct report program managers, Feinberg the deputy wouldn't need them if you didn't have these bloated processes and bloated bureaucracies. You know, he's had to bring in three and four stars, you know, over golden dome, over some of the high technology stuff in the Air Force, the submarines, which are critically important. One of the remaining tremendous advantages we have over the Chinese and the Russians that we never want to Lose, because we're behind in a lot of areas like hypersonics and things of that. So if you wouldn't need these direct report program managers if the system was working like the way it's supposed to work. So there's the unfinished business. [00:42:59] Speaker B: So is that unfinished business able to be addressed within the current framework that was established by these pieces of legislation, or do we need a new round of legislation to address the issues? [00:43:12] Speaker A: So one thing that Congress can do, the building can't do, is make things permanent. I think a lot of these changes that are the good changes that we're seeing in the department need to be put in statute because frankly, the minute the current leadership leaves because of just their personalities and frankly, and I hate saying this, their poor relations with the Congress, Congress is going to wipe all this out. So it needs to be a lot of things, changes that are being made are really good, good ones. Only Congress can make things permanent. That's the problem. If you go look, go look at the last three administrations when it comes to presidential executive orders. Every single President writes all these executive orders, and the minute they leave office, the next president wipes out all their executive orders, even the good ones and the bad ones. That's happened. So the same thing happens in the Pentagon. When you have something that's only put in by executive fiat, and there's so many of those, and they're actually so many, it's hard to keep up with them on pricing and a lot of things like that, on fixed price contracts, a lot of these things that Congress needs to sit back and they've done something with the FORGED act and the SPEED act, and you have in the bipartisan leadership of the Armed Services Committee, the policy committees, not the funding committees, because they don't put legislative language in for the most part. You've got with Roger Wicker and Jack Reed, with Mike Rogers and Adam Smith, four of the finest leaders we've ever had of those two committees. They're very committed to the needed reforms. It just takes time on all this stuff to get it into legend. Yes. The bottom line, long winded answer, the short answer is yes, we need it to be made permanent. [00:44:45] Speaker B: So going forward, I guess we'll maybe kind of wrap up with this. You know, if we project forward, not just a couple of years, but maybe a few decades, with the strategic, strategic environment changing the way it is. The U.S. you know, in 1986, the U.S. was one of two superpowers in the world. Shortly thereafter, it became the sole superpower. That landscape is the Geopolitical landscape is shifting, the technological landscape is shifting, the global economy is shifting. You know, all of these sort of layers of context within which we operate are changing. Are you optimistic that the spirit of Goldwater Nickels will remain as effective and instrumental as it was in its initial four decades? Or do you think it's really going to take a concerted effort to shore up some of what it, it achieved and, and maybe even take it further where new needs arise? [00:45:36] Speaker A: So I think let's, let's talk about the future because the future is really important. Fundamentals looks at drone and autonomy. Really important. The creation of the new autonomy command. I see that very much akin to the Special Operations Command. They can be able to provide that capability to the war fighting commanders. The technology is changing. I had the privilege of chairing the National Defense industrial association for two terms. The largest of the defense association, 1800 member companies. The primes, the medium size, the small, mom and pops. And we created the Emerging Technologies Institute so we could focus the Pentagon and focus our economy on these emerging technologies that are so critical not just for the military, but for our country to be economically competitive. 5G, 6G quantum AI, lasers, hypersonics and things like that. And so my view is that we need to basically within the context of the operational chain of command, which I think Goldwater Nichols is fine, we need to make sure we add these new capabilities. You know, autonomy has got to be joint right now like it was with Special Operations before SOCOM was created. There are a lot of, you know, stovepipes. There's a lot of different efforts. We want people to basically want to serve in these commands, be trained in these commands and become very proficient in these commands. That's got to happen. You know, I think with the initiative that the Secretary has taken, he's bringing in another great Marine, Owen west, the DPRM for drones and unmanned. He's going to be heading up, creating the autonomy. You couldn't get a better person to do this because he knows all the lessons of Special ops. So my point is I think the fundamental framework of Goldwater Nickels will serve the country well on the war fighting side going into the future. But we've got to make sure on the management side, all these new technologies, all these new initiatives, all these reforms that people are talking about or baked into the fundamentals of the department in terms of organization, process and leadership and getting the right leaders. And I think it will fit well within the context of strong civilian control of the military. The chairman is the chief military advisor and the war fighting commands are the focus of main effort in the center of gravity. But with all this new technology and streamlined processes brought to bear. So I am very optimistic about the future we have. As I said, and I don't make this, you know, I think you've got to approach national security on a bipartisan basis. That was a hallmark of Senator Nunn and Barry Goldwater because you need it for the long term. You can't just, you can't fundamentally affect defense in a six month, one or two year period. So if you do it on a partisan basis, it just doesn't last. So I'm very optimistic about the future because our committees, and by the way, that goes for the funding committees as well. Ken Calvert, Betty McCollum, McConnell, Coons, they all report, they all support defense on a bipartisan basis. So with these kind of changes, we're talking about the technological changes, the process changes under the fundamentals of Goldwater Nichols, I think I'm very optimistic and the young kids that are coming in the military today, I'm very optimistic about the future. [00:48:46] Speaker B: Well, on that note, I think we will wrap up the discussion. I want to thank you again for joining me. You know, it's one thing to be converted in a subject, it's, it's another to even be deeply knowledgeable about it. But it's, you know, it's completely different when you're speaking to somebody who has a command of the subject matter that can only really come from deep study or personal experience in, in your case. And so this was a fantastic and insightful conversation that I really enjoyed. I trust listeners will as well. So I want to thank you again for joining me. [00:49:12] Speaker A: Well, such a privilege to be asked to join. Such a privilege. Foreign. [00:49:22] Speaker B: Hey, thank you so much for listening to the MWI podcast. One last thing before you go. If you're enjoying the podcast, please take just a moment to give it a rating or leave a review. You can do that wherever you get your podcast. And it really does help new listeners to find us. [00:49:36] Speaker A: Thanks again.